Chatting today about this great Jonathan Sterne article on the MP3 format as a container technology with a rich cultural presence, capable of study as an artifact in its own right. Super smart mode of media history—download it here [PDF].
I wrote this summary a few months ago:
The MP3 as Cultural Artifact Jonathan Sterne. New Media & Society 8:5 (2006).
Because the mp3 encoding format has become an universal language for online audio, sparking an international intellectual property controversy, Sterne urges the reader to consider the cultural, social, and historical development of this technological artifact as a way to navigate the dramatic impact mp3s are making from daily listening praxeology to the politics of the recording industry. Opening with a citation from Langdon Winner reminding us that “technological artifacts ‘embody specific forms of power and authority’,” Sterne writes from the social construction (Wiebe Bijker) and actor-network theory (Bruno Latour) perspective on the construction of technologies, focussing specifically on Zoë Sofia’s expansion of Lewis Mumford’s concept of “container technologies” as applied to the mp3. From the technical details of mp3 sampling (and its historical development) to the technology’s dependence on ‘distracted’ human listeners and the limited capacity bandwidth of computer networks, Sterne makes a convincing case for the cultural bias of the mp3 (its ‘highest moral calling’) that demands audio redundancies, easy distribution, hard drive storage, and distracted listening subjects. Initially developed by the recording industry in response to digital recording challenges, the mp3 has come to express the character of its technology in social terms: an important consideration for those engaged in intellectual property discussions as well as the everyday user-listener.
: :
: :
From the article:
“The mp3 is a form designed for massive exchange, casual listening and massive accumulation. As a container technology designed to execute a process on its contents, it does what it was made to do. The primary, illegal uses of the mp3 are not aberrant uses or an error in the technology; they are its highest moral calling: ‘Eliminate redundancies! Reduce bandwidth use! Travel great distances frequently and with little effort! Accumulate on the hard drives of the middle class! Address a distracted listening subject!’ These are the instructions encoded into the very form of the mp3. This is the mission that an mp3 carries out as it travels down network lines onto my hard drive; as it instructs my computer to construct a datastream that will become electricity, that in turn will vibrate the speakers on my desk and the membranes in my ears as I type this sentence. The mp3 has a job to do, and it does it very well.”
From Mark Granovetter’s compelling &somewhat zany sociometric article “The Strength of Weak Ties” published in 1973 by The American Journal of Sociology. [Download article PDF]
Granovetter proposes a network theory for linking micro and macro levels of sociological theory through an analysis of various types of ‘weak ties’ bridging groups otherwise bound by ‘strong ties.’ While the programmatic, psuedo-scientific tone of the essay kept me laughing, I think there’s a really compelling prophetic overlap with contemporary works of data visualization queued up to online social networks, which can process the kinds of relationship structures Granovetter proposes with a few clicks. It’s almost as though Zukerberg is playing Granovetter—there couldn’t be a better vehicle for this kind of ‘research’ than facebook itself.
Anyhow, I’m mostly interested in the article with regards to how it might be applied to literary studies, particularly the literary networks represented in magazines. Some similar visualizations (&ultimately calculations) could prove helpful in unraveling some of the ties between writers, tropes, &themes in objects like the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine (pictured below using VUE).
Throughout this network culture program, I’ll be particularly interested in how the tools &tactics of network theories can be activated to translate these kinds of historical literary / artistic (publishing) networks.
Sorry to miss the first (&next) class! Have been in Paris (performing with Vito Acconci &James Hoff at the Centre Pompidou) &Berlin (screening this moving picture called Flash Artifacts, on wch I’ll write more later.. .) Looking forward to getting back &digging into Network Cultures with yuall!
Anyhow, here’s a short introduction &only follow the links as/if they interest you! (*^_^*)
Tnx for the shoutout in class Kazys &yes, I work for UbuWeb, the internet’s great repository for all things avant-garde, innovative, &experimental. I’ve been the editor of /ubu Editions for a few years &have lately been interested in critically investigating UbuWeb thru a series of live (staged) events.
Otherwise, I archive-edit at PennSound, where I’m also involved in investigating the networks, translations, &generalized digitization going on there.
As a writer-editor, I’m especially interested in digitizing books. I started my online work as a scanner at Eclipse (wch you’ve got to visit!) &have made a few explorations into this peculiar kind of remediation. On point here, I’ve been involved in the Nobody Books collective for a year or so, where we’ve expanded Foreman’s No-Body, a novel in parts, at—(not sure if you were there Kazys?)—Studio-X among other places.
Surely, that’s entirely too much for now! I used to run a somewhat active sharity blog called j.henry chunko, wch I’ve been considering reviving. But for tonight, I found an old post on Acconci’s “Theme Song” to share. Thematically, much of my work is interested in the various ways that ‘older’ media—like print, vinyl, or celluloid—are reconfigured in digital contexts. “Theme Song”, as I was just reminded of in conversation with Acconci this weekend, is an exemplary case of how a video-work meant to be played on a large monitor in a gallery (ostensibly interrogating the potential for intimacy in that kind of public space) is now screened in the incredibly intimate environment of rich media consoles. Anyhow, I’ll talk more on this, so I won’t bore you with too much now, but do enjoy this (flash) video!
Forwarding this wonderful new Radio Open Source Thomas Levin podcast [tnx Greg Laynor!]. Lots of interesting points in there. To follow up: big batch of articles on JSTOR to find, Mass Ornament is essential, &I wish this book were still in print. [Catalog for the phenomenal show available online.] A great thinker of some of the issues NetCult has been following this week—locative media, surveillance, &psychogeography in particular. Recall an excellent Slought roundtable with Rabaté, Sanborn, &Vidler following some Debord films a few years ago.. . Still online! Listen here.
Image below of Bacher piece via CTRL [SPACE] site (link is to a Liz Kotz text):
Isn’t it nice how the CTRL [SPACE] site gives you an IP address alarm? Good to remember where one is.. .
Jumping the gun a bit here, but this reminds me of a compelling hook concluding Alex Galloway’s short article on Protocol for TCS (graciously, found on aaaarg here). The basic thrust of the argument goes against the notion “that networks have the potential to dehierarchize, disrupt and generally dissolve rigid structures of all varieties… In fact, it is the opposite: distributed networks produce an entirely new system of organization and control that, while perhaps incompatible with pyramidal systems of power, is nevertheless just as effective at keeping things in line.”
From this, I’m thinking now on how the idea of ‘solving search’ (especially thru Google) ties into these thots on the ‘de-politicization’ of algorithms. So the hook goes:
There is essentially no intellectual movement today dedicated to the political critique of algo- rithms. Likewise there exists no alternative movement dedicated to the creation and development of alternative, or ‘progressive’, algo- rithms. For the most part the political develop- ment of algorithms revolves around a philosophy of utility and efficiency. These being but a minute slice of the human condition, I call for the creation of an experimental school of alternative algorithms modeled around a variety of political and social goods. We need a viable critique of collaborative filtering. We need a language in which to appraise the Google page rank algo- rithm. An examination of the de-politicization of algorithms will help.
Or:
… A new exploit is necessary, one that is as asymmetrical in relationship to distributed networks as the distrib- uted network was to the power centers of modernity…
